"It would be foolish of you not fear me." Finch's heart began to race again as Calliope placed her muzzle within a whisker of Finch's own. This must be fear. It was terror, pouring through her veins, making her feel lightheaded and a touch dizzy. For a moment, she parts her lips to say it: I am afraid of you. But as soon as she does, the tension evaporates with another huff from Calliope and she pulls away. With the distance between them reset, Finch's heart slows its gallop, but her veins still burned hot with some unidentified, mercurial feeling. If only she could put a name to it...
Finally, Calliope gives her something else to focus on: a story. Finch gave her rapt attention, hanging on every word that came from her pastel princess' mouth. She loved a good story - and this one was excellent. She'd always thought one day that she might get to have a great adventure of her own, had dreamed about it and yearned after it, and here was Calliope: a creature made entirely of it. Crafted from battle scars and baptized in blood. The tale she pun was a wilder story than anything she'd ever gotten up to in Avalon. The scariest thing Finch had ever experienced before being dragged across the continent by Calliope was get told off for eating too many apples at harvest time. She couldn't even conceive of being so young - six months old! - and fighting for her life.
"That's incredible," she breathed, her eyes almost child-like with how wide they grew. Impressed was an understatement. "You three were so brave. I can't imagine what I would have done in a similar situation..." Her brows stitched together. Before Calliope, she'd never even been verbally insulted, much less had to fight for life. Tooth and claw. Blood for blood. What would she do in a situation like that? "I suppose I don't really know what I'd do. You must only really find out what you're made of when your back is against the wall, and the only way through is forward," she mused idly. Finch couldn't picture what that might look like for her, of course. The worst thing that had ever happened to her was her mother dying (and while her heart still ached for her), that sort of thing came for everyone eventually. Even Calliope, brave as she seemed, admitted it: she would die. But it would be on her terms.
Fatigue still bit down deep, straight to the bone, but laying next to Calliope was helping. Heat emanated from the bigger girl, and Finch allowed herself to relish in the feeling of being tucked away beside her. There was something comforting about it, the difference in size, that feeling of being enclosed fully by the other body around her. "I like that. That you control your own fate. It's powerful," she whispered, her eyes half-lidded with exhaustion and that other, foreign feeling. "Sometimes I feel like everything my life so far has just... happened to me," Finch continued, "and that I stood by and watched it all. Didn't have a say in it. You would never do that." Twig's death had happened to her. Calliope had happened to her, spirited her away from Avalon, and Finch had simply went.
Even as her heart longed for home, the comfort of the den she shared with her sister and the familiar smell of the orchard after rain, this was the most interesting thing that had ever happened to her. If she lingered long enough, she might start to have a say in whatever happened next. Finch peered up at Calliope, weighing her next sentence carefully. "Why did you snatch me, anyway? I'm just a little bird. You can find one of those anywhere - and I know you're a capable hunter." An innocent, leading question, followed by a compliment. If she could wring more information out of Cal about her intentions, maybe she could formulate a plan. Maybe she would have a say in what happened next in her life.
"speech"
